Keeping Up With Everything: Teen Celebs and the Media

By Annie M. who wants help teens realize that they are not the only ones feeling alone, sad, frustrated or in need of some health guidance.

When my friends and I walk into Forever 21 to pick out our back-to-school outfits, we all know we’ll probably be basing our choices off of what we saw Kylie and Kendall wearing to a red carpet event, or what Miley Cyrus was photographed wearing on the streets. These girls dictate what teenagers wear and how they act, no matter how hard we may try to deny it.

The problem with celebriteens like Kendall and Kylie is that they create an unattainable stereotype of what teenage girls should look and act like. They make you think that you have to cake your face with expensive makeup and have all the latest designer clothing in order to be “cool,” and that you need to be glamorous, skinny and long-legged in order to be beautiful.

And since these girls are so famous, they can seriously impact teenage girls everywhere. In fact, about 77% of Americans believe that celebrities have too much influence on teenage girls – that’s a huge amount! Plus,teen magazines photoshop their young models to have even thinner, more “perfect” bodies, and so their readers are being subjected to an even higher standard of how they’re supposed to look! Talk about pressure and bad body image.

It doesn’t stop there. A study done by the National Eating Disorder Association showed that “42 percent of first- through third-grade girls say they want to be thinner, and 81 percent of 10 year olds are afraid of being fat.” That’s a lot of body image confusion, and yet it’s not that surprising – the study also found that “the average American model is 5’11” tall and weighs 117 pounds,” an insane standard that young girls are taught they have to live up to.

Celebriteens influence more than just how girls think they’re supposed to look – since their popularity has made them role models, they set an example for how we’re meant to act. Scary thought?

Think about this: Miley Cyrus began as a Disney startlet on the hit show Hannah Montana, and sang songs about accepting your flaws and loving life. She was a so-called “role-model,” but is now known for wearing skimpy clothes, dancing on stripper poles at the Kid’s Choice Awards, and being engaged at only 19! If the teen queen idol is shaking her butt to suggestive music and wearing raunchy outfits, what kind of message does that send to young girls?

Not a good one. In fact, the same study as before shows that children as young as first graders have been noticed “using derogatory language, singing suggestive song lyrics, and even flirting with each other” as a result of questionable role models like Miley Cyrus.

Crazy as that might seen, it’s true! How many young girls have you seen tumbling around in sky-high shoes, tight mini-dresses or pounds of foundation and eyeliner? Way too many, and it’s all because of celebriteens. And what about the inappropriate songs about drinking and sex that girls are singing along to from the time they’re in elementary school? It’s crazy, and that’s not what girls should be learning!

Though these celebriteens are famous and beautiful, the fact of the matter is they aren’t normal. They probably have never stepped foot in a Macys or Forever 21, and spend all their time exercising or running away from paparazzi. They’ll never get to make real friends, go to school, play around or just enjoy being a teen! These girls aren’t normal, and so we shouldn’t look to them as role models or examples.

So next time your watching Keeping Up With The Kardashians or Miley’s new music videos and you start to envy those teens, put the jealousy aside and realize that you are a real teenage who can dictate what you want to do and start trends just as much as they can. You know what it’s like to be a normal, everyday teen, and that experience is priceless no matter how hard it is.